


rapture from the inside

by Merit



Category: Craft Sequence - Max Gladstone
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 18:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15869559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merit/pseuds/Merit
Summary: Dresediel Lex saw his father as a super villain. Caleb thought it was more... complicated than that.





	rapture from the inside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opalmatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/gifts).



When the city fell, Temoc fell. Fell _hard_.

Dresediel Lex was in ruins. The broad boulevards torn and interned with great holes. The trees were free of leaves, bone-white skeletal branches tearing into the cerulean sky. The earth was a dry lifeless brown, decades of tender care and ministrations, lost in a summer of bloodshed and ruin.

Lost at the city was riven and torn into two by masked men and women.

The ground was sodden and dark with the blood of his fallen comrades. Splayed corpses gaped unthinkingly at him, never to speak, to laugh, to till the earth again.

Above him, cape swirling like a potent behind him, bright metal encasing his body, the King in Red descended to deliver the final blow.

Temoc braced himself.

 

Warm yellow light drifted in long, hazy columns through the classroom windows. At the front of the classroom, the teacher was droning on, something-something thousands dead, appearing utterly disinterested, modern history was all the same.

"The third battle of Huitzilin Square started when the water ran dry for three days in the middle of summer," she said, a bead of sweat running down her neck. 

Caleb felt his eyelids droop, a yawn threatening him at the back of his throat, as the numbers continued to rise.

"There were mixed perspectives on what should have happened and what even started the third battle. The Eagle Knights, now known widely as petty criminals, are considered by most to be the instigators of the battle and the ones ultimately responsible for stopping the water to the Square," she continued. Caleb's eyebrow twitched, and he turned his head, looking out the window. He'd grown up on different tales, sitting on his father's knee, in those brief years when Temoc had been granted amnesty.

Before Temoc had gone back to Square.

He had a pair of dice under his desk, gently rolling them between his fingers, the groves well known to his finger tips. Sweat ran down clammy fingers, his thin shirt sticking to the back of his neck.

Then the sirens started.

He jerked to attention, sitting ramrod straight. The teacher sighed as the metal shutters descended, warm yellow sunlight disappearing.

“The school got upgraded over the break,” she said, leaning against her desk. “Too many school days broken up by fleeing to the emergency shelters,” she looked over the class, and if she settled on Caleb, it didn’t have to _mean_ anything. “Class continues courtesy of Red King Consolidated,” she said, returning to the blackboard. Her voice barely quaked as the building shook, strange shrieks echoed against the shutters, the metal groaning.

The class sighed.

No one had died at the school since Caleb had been enrolled. Him and one hundred and seventy-four other people. And the race to the underground shelters, encased in three feet of lead, was fraught with shrapnel as the skies darkened and spat lightning above them. But once inside, the teachers shivering with cold sweats, the ancient air filtration system humming heavily, almost blankening the screams and crashes outside, the kids could relax. Forget their lessons.

And Caleb made a killing playing dice.

 

This far up, the skyscraper half-built, a crane for company, Caleb could barely hear the traffic below. Legs dangling, school bag tossed against a pile of rubble, he leaned forward. A gust of wind blew his hair back, the sun hot against the back of his neck, summer not yet a memory.

“Your mother wouldn’t like that,” his father said.

Caleb rolled his eyes. He’d already had a couple years of teenage rebellion, of wild parties, of cards like magic, yelling at his dad, but. He still hated it when his father brought his mother into it.

“She wouldn’t like this either,” his said, gesturing to Temoc, taking in the cape and the ridiculous costume. Under the bright light of the sun, of the summer that wouldn’t end, Caleb could almost imagine not seeing the scars up and down Temoc’s body.

Almost.

His father smiled, slow and sure, white teeth glinting under the setting sun. Temoc never really forgot he was the predator. “You’re growing into a fine man,” he said, one step forward, great boots covered in dust and blood and everything his mother had fled from. “Even if you do foolishly climb this cursed tower that dares to blight the skies. You will be my legacy.”

“I’m not joining you on your pointless crusade,” Caleb said, drawing away from the edge of the building. Above them, three birds circled. Caleb squinted at them, fighting the sun, and couldn’t make out the species. He rubbed at his arms, long shirt sleeves despite the heat, despite summer lingering long into autumn.

“The fight is worthy,” Temoc said calmly, an immovable wall, still certain he would one day convince Caleb, scars glinted under the sun. “And I would never ask you. You’ll come to that realization yourself, surrounded by great injustices every day, under the rule of that mechanical tyrant.”

“Hardly anyone thinks that these days,” Caleb said, rolling his eyes when his father couldn't see. "And you hardly see him these days."

"Closed off in his tower," Temoc mused, rubbing his chin, back to the pyramid jutting into the sky, "Plotting who knows what. There used to be rules. Laws that everyone _knew_."

"Not everything has to be about _you_ ," Caleb sighed.

“I was considered a hero, once,” Temoc said flatly. “The world has moved unceasingly around me but the world _will_ turn against him one day.”

Caleb stayed silent, until his father moved, a shadow against the sun, eclipsing his world for a moment.

“Oh and you should eat more vegetables. You’re looking a bit sallow,” his father said, before disappearing over the building’s edge.

Caleb rolled his eyes. Temoc always had to the last word.

 

The next day he started his internship at the Red King Consolidated.

 

He’d submitted the application on a lark. The essay something he had cobbled together, listening to his father’s speeches as Dresediel Lex rushed to the future, remembering the stories and half-truth during his history lessons, of the whispers between two scared teenagers in a shelter. His mother had smiled when he asked her to sign off the application, one gentle eyebrow raising in amusement.

"Very interesting, Caleb," she murmured. "I wasn't expecting something like this for a few more years."

He never actually thought he’d be accepted.

Not with _his_ name.

 

Everyone grew up hearing tales of the King in Red. He had a real name, once, but that wasn't the name emblazoned on half the buildings in Dresediel Lex.

The brightest, the boldest, was in stark red up one of the old pyramids. During a particularly active winter, his father had attacked the pyramid seven times, daring the King in Red to take his name off the pyramid. While RKC stocks slid perilously low - almost low enough that some whispered that Temoc and the King in Red were in cahoots, that this was some way for the King in Red to buy back his company in totality, enough for Caleb to laugh at the impossibility of the idea - the King himself never wavered.

Caleb had grown up on Temoc's tales of the King in Red.

The monster in the metal suit. The man that had driven all that was good out of Dresediel Lex.

Powers had once defined Dresediel Lex. But the King in Red changed that with his metal suit. And the city changed hands, dirty money, his father whispered. And his father's people were pushed to the edge of the city and out into the desert.

Temoc hadn't taken that well.

 

Caleb showed up late - _someone_ had to do something about the public transport in this city, he thought, running a hand across his sweaty brow, dark hair sticking up in spikes. The air was hot, dry, it had hardly rained this summer. Long sunny days stretching into warm nights.

A series of suits directed him higher and higher up the pyramid. Finally he entered a great room, soaring ceilings, and deathly quiet. The clack of keyboards, the snap of heels, hurried mutterings between meetings, all melted away.

A woman with a slash of red across her mouth was waiting for him, tapping at a tablet with a faint frown across her smooth brown forehead.

Caleb took a deep breath, taking his bearings. He’d never actually been in one of the pyramids. They’d once been the tallest buildings in town, but now they were shadowed by glass and steel skyscrapers. _Sacred places_ , he could almost hear his father say, _before_ him.

He steeled his back, straightened his shoulders and walked up to the woman. She stood, towering over his by several inches. The nameplate in front of her read **_Nare Itzmoyotl_ ** in dark, bold font.

“He doesn’t like waiting for people,” she murmured, extending one long finger in the direction of a wooden door.

 

His father’s sworn enemy was before him.

He’d heard his father’s rants a thousand, thousand times.

Heard him vow death.

The King in Red sat at a wide desk, conspicuously free of papers. A shiny computer, sleek and slim, dominated the center. And the only adornment was a small framed picture, tilted so only the person sitting at desk could see the picture within the frame.

The man himself was tall, thin and older than Caleb would have pictured from the front page newspapers and company profiles. But in most of them he was wearing the suit; red and black metal encasing his body. 

“Caleb… Altemoc?” The King in Red said, almost softly, but his voice carried over the vast room. Half his name said like a curse, the sounds twisting upon themselves.

“Yes. Uh. Sir?” Caleb said, wondering why he had to be so _smart_ to submit the essay, why were the odds always _against_ him. The metal suit was off to the side, dust motes floating through the air, none daring to settle on the matte metal.

“Hm,” and he stood, all seven feet of him, impossible and mighty. The first hero to announce to the world who he truly was, not hiding behind a mask, just the great cape that announced him wherever he would go. That he wouldn't let the Eagle Knights strange Dresediel Lex anymore. “Your essay raised some interesting philosophical questions.”

“Thanks,” Caleb said, feeling that was the safest answer to give.

“I found the title very amusing,” and Caleb felt a cold sweat jerk to attention along his spine, because _of course_ he found the title amusing. “Twelve Things I Learned While Dresediel Lex Was Under Attack By My Super Villain Father.”

“Ha. Ha,” Caleb said.

“A lot of people say we should be going back to the old days,” the King in Red said, standing, cape moving like liquid silk. “Is that what you think?”

“Um,” Caleb said.  “I think unmitigated capitalism and inane technological changes should be considered in the broader context?”

“Hm,” the King in Red said.

“The summer has been really long,” Caleb said. “But now I’m back in school and RKO has installed new shutters in the school.”

“You’re petitioning for a longer summer vacation?”

“No! I mean, yeah that would be great, but that wasn’t the point of the essay,” Caleb said in a rush. “There shouldn’t have be shutters.”

“Interesting,” and then he signalled to someone behind Caleb. He turned, noticing Nare slide silently into the wrong. “I think we should take a photo to commemorate the occasion,” he said idly, red cape swirling around his shoulders like there was unseen wind.

“Oh that would be excellent press,” Nare murmured, hauling out a very expensive looking camera from seemingly out of nowhere.

“Press?” Caleb stuttered, voice cracking, feeling like he had been sentenced to be thirteen again.

“I am running a business here, Caleb,” he said drily, like the winds that snaked through Dresediel Lex.

“Uh,” Caleb said, “For, um, company publications?” His father technically could read those but usually threw them away, muttering about pointless techno-babble.

The King in Red stared at him with a blank expression on his face. “I have bigger plans,” he said, long bony fingers digging into Caleb’s shoulder. “Now smile for the camera!”

Caleb weakly smiled at the beaming Nare.

He was going to be in so much trouble.


End file.
